Sunday, February 8, 2009

Music-Love Adventures

Last week some time, Ruthanne launched her epic operation to organize show-going. It was intense: there were emails, phone calls, lists, price tallies, and entire pages set aside in her planner. There was some serious thinking ahead going on here.

At first, of course, there was resistance, skepticism, and flakiness on my part. Planning?! I would think uncomfortably. Thinking ahead??? I hesitated committing to ten whole dollars for a ticket. And did I want to go see Tapes n Tapes or Ben Kweller, who were both playing on the same night.

Still, though, last Saturday I embarked on an epic troll with through Cambridge plucking tickets from the hands of bored hipster box office employees and braving the cruel February wind, all for the promise of live music, Ruthatalie adventures.

And a Ruthatalie adventure there was - Passion Pit came to the Middle East friday night, amid the thunderous excitement that can only belong to the band's hometown crowd, raucously celebrating the return of their musical beloveds. We'd seen Passion Pit a year ago at NU, but even in that short time, there was a marked change to the atmosphere, the look, the presence of the band. Wow, I thought. I've been in Hawaii for a while.

We left right after the encore, and grabbed the bus before the crowd, spinning over the dark nighttime waters of the Charles, peaceful in our silent, uncrowded bus, comfortable in that dried-sweat after-show freshness feel.